Lordships to be
cautious how you admit such accounts at all to be given in evidence,
into the truth of which you cannot penetrate in any regular way. Upon
the face of the two accounts there is a gross fraud. It is no matter
which is true or false, as it is an account which you are in no
situation to decide upon. I lay down this as a fixed judicial rule, that
no judge ought to receive an account (which, is as serious a part of a
judicial proceeding as can be) the correctness of which he has no means
of ascertaining, but must depend upon the sole word of the accountant.

Having stated, therefore, the nature of the offence, which differs
nothing from a common dog-trot fraud, such as we see amongst the meanest
of mankind, your Lordships will be cautious how you admit these, or any
other of his pretended services, to be set off against his crimes. These
stand on record confessed before you; the former, of which you can form
no just estimate, and into which you cannot enter, rest for their truth
upon his own assertions, and they all are found, upon the very face of
them, to carry marks of fraud as well as of wickedness.

I have only further to observe to your Lordships, that this
Mudjed-o-Din, who, under the patronage of Mr. Hastings, was to do all
these wonders, Lord Cornwallis turned out of his office with every mark
of disgrace, when he attempted to put into some more respectable state
that establishment which Mr. Hastings had made a sink of abuse.

I here conclude all that I have to say upon this business, trusting that
your Lordships will feel yourselves more offended, and justice more
insulted, by the defence than by the criminal acts of the prisoner at
your bar; and that your Lordships will concur with us in thinking, that
to make this unhappy people make these attestations, knowing the direct
contrary of every word which they say to be the truth, is a shocking
aggravation of his guilt. I say they must know it; for Lord Cornwallis
tells you it is notorious; and if you think fit to inquire into it, you
will find that it was unusually notorious.

* * * * *

My Lords, we have now brought to a conclusion our observations upon the
effects produced by that mass of oppression which we have stated and
proved before your Lordships,--namely, its effects upon the revenues,
and upon the public servants of the Company. We have shown you how
greatly the former were diminished, and in what manner th